League of Legends XXXIX: Harrowing in the Playground

[Eldariel]

I think that's asking for a bit much. I'd be fine with his W being more interesting if he didn't:

• have a 50% attack speed steroid
• have 550 attack range
• have the ability to apply on-hits at 1100 range
• have a low-cooldown blink with more range than flash
• have a global ultimate nuke

Something had to go, don't you think? Maybe his debuff wasn't the best option. I was hoping that they'd just hit his passive/E pretty significantly, but anything that makes him less dominant is welcome.

Hey, just two months ago people were calling him the weakest AD carry 'cause his W manacost was higher.

[ZeroNumerous]

Hey, just two months ago people were calling him the weakest AD carry 'cause his W manacost was higher.

I was under the impression that he was the weakest at pro-level because his skillshots were easy to dodge.

[Reynard]

gee
gee

:D

Time to build Bruta + LW in every game ever.

Olaf now has an excuse to build LW. Everything he ever does will be true damage to AP and AD Carries. Even if they actually build armour items.

[Fredaintdead]

Olaf now has an excuse to build LW. Everything he ever does will be true damage to AP and AD Carries. Even if they actually build armour items.

LW, Ghostblade, Rank 3 Ult Passive, Armor Pen Quints and the Weapon Expertise Mastery means he has ~60 flat armor pen and ~46% percentile armor pen. Anyone with less than ~112 armour hits 0. Nasty.

[Maeglin_Dubh]

LW+GB on Darius.

This is going to be fun.

EDIT: Eve nerfs don't really affect me much... I always saw her ult as a luxury, and I don't think I'll miss the extra scaling. The DFG nerf likewise, I never really rushed it on her.
Rengar got slammed, not sure how he'll do nowadays. Certainly not going to be in any hurry to get Bonetooth unless we're already stomping.... (see also every other snowball item)
Skarner I'll have to fiddle with to see how the shield nerf affects his clear. Although, with the jungle rework upcoming, him and Rengar both might wind up pretty well slammed.
Tristana buffs are nice. I've always wondered why she saw so little play compared to the other mobile ADC's (the unholy trinity of unstoppable supercarries that is Corkzreaves), maybe this will push a comeback.

[Forrestfire]

Tristana sees so little play because the passive on her explosive shot autopushes the lane for her, and so it's very hard to play passive/freeze lane/not get ganked all the time.

[Silverraptor]

Lee Sin frustrates me almost every time I see him. He's so tanky AND does so much damage, with the amount of mobility and debuffing he has. There's something sincerely disturbing about seeing him running around with four thousand health and 300 damage.

On an entirely unrelated note, Jayce.

I really wish I could play Lee sin, yet everytime I touch him I don't do nearly as well as every other Lee Sin I see. I wish I could get alot better at him...

[Eldariel]

I was under the impression that he was the weakest at pro-level because his skillshots were easy to dodge.

His skillshot is actually fairly fast. Plus, aiming also improves with playskill, not just dodging. For some skills this is more important than for others (see: Flash Frost).

[Psyborg]

So given the following confirmed itemization changes for S3:

• %Armor Pen now calculated before Flat
• Price of flat resists increasing slightly.
• New AD caster and jungler itemization options (and presumably AD caster items will include at least one with armor penetration)

It seems likely that any AD bruiser/fighter/caster that cares to will be able to do true damage to any amount of armor reasonably achievable by mages (who aren't Ryze), supports, or carries without compromising their effectiveness. Not to mention Olaf (holy *deity of choice*).

So will we see people picking up health, health per level, or even armor per level seals on people that aren't Vladimir, since the 13 armor still won't get you above 0 effective against the people that are going to be diving you and the health will at least count for something?

[Godskook]

Tristana sees so little play because the passive on her explosive shot autopushes the lane for her, and so it's very hard to play passive/freeze lane/not get ganked all the time.

I was under the impression that her greatest weakness was a poor transition phase. Either you maxed both your 'mage' skills early for bursting power and weren't an impressive AD carry until hyper-late game, or you maxed your AS steroid second, and lacked some of the bursting power that makes Tristana quite so scary in later-early to early-mid game.

Explosive shot's passive can be managed, and the 'nerf' to AP Trist actually made it easier to do so. Plus, pushing the lane is only really a problem if you're not warding properly, which the duo lane generally doesn't have as many problems with, due to the support starting with wards. Otherwise, it can often lead to advantageous positions(in the championships, I saw more than one team try to get an early 1st tower to a tower dive before the 7:00 minute mark in whichever lane their duo was in(sometimes it was top).

[Laudandus]

I'm really happy about the Skarner nerfs because he was the most annoying thing before

I'm with Eld on the Ezreal nerf. It doesn't really seem to fit at all to have 2 pure damage skill shots that are very, very similar to each other. I've been trying to think of ways to fix it, though, and nothing immediately comes to mind for his W to do; slow seems too overpowered, healing reduction makes mechanical sense but is thematically really weird and out of place, armor reduction is too much like it is now. It wants to be a poke skill, but it's too hard to have poke not do only damage. Maybe it would be better as a heal that buffs attack speed and doesn't even do anything to enemy targets.

[PersonMan]

I'm pretty excited about the TT rework, although unfortunately it seems like the EUW servers are currently down for whatever reason.

[MCerberus]

I'm really happy about the Skarner nerfs because he was the most annoying thing before

Skarner's annoyingness mostly came from 'oh look your entire team is permaslowed'... or did you mean the ult-flash thing?

[McDouggal]

OK, after a few games as Sona, where I unintentionally fed the entiretey of the enemy team, I refunded Sona and bought Blitzcrank.

Best. Purchase. EVER. If they ever aren't behind a minion, *grab**knockup**dead*.

I've found my new main.

This also means Blitz free week next week. Cuz whenever I find an awesome new champ to buy, Riot makes it FTP next week

[Tychris1]

Skarner's annoyingness mostly came from 'oh look your entire team is permaslowed'... or did you mean the ult-flash thing?

Ult Flash pissed me off so much, eventually I just stopped flashing if it was a good Skarner. Ult stealth also kind of annoyed me at first:

"HAHA! Last second of stealth buildup is almost over! 0.3 seconds to go-"
*Grabs*
"Well, if my corpse gets stealthed when I die, then my crystalized form should stealth too right?... RIGHT?"
*Gets intsagibbed*

[Laudandus]

Skarner's annoyingness mostly came from 'oh look your entire team is permaslowed'... or did you mean the ult-flash thing?

His ult was much more annoying than the permaslow. It wouldn't be (and isn't, now!) so bad if he didn't grab you even out of escape skills. It just makes him seem completely inescapable.

[Qwertystop]

Is it just me, or is Vilemaw massively OP?

Also, it seems to have been given better AI than Baron. Or at least different AI. Because I was standing in the back as Karth and it was hitting me with what seems to be the closest it has to an AA (as it probably is similar to Baron in everything qualifying as a spell).

[Istari]

Well new map is fun, though I've noticed that laning is pretty much nonexistent except for a little bit early and when pushing.

[Eldariel]

The new 3v3 feels like the old 3v3 minus the overpowered Wraith buff and the Lizard Elder. Dunno about champion viability with the new items yet but somehow I'm convinced every champ is still viable.

[Duos]

I love Phreak's preview of the new TT.

"Killing vilemaw gives you a buff similar to baron nashor. Also you totally just killed a bigass spider."

I may check out the new TT; i wasn't really big into 3s before but the new items have perked my interest. I really wish Riot would try to add more new items more often.

[ex cathedra]

Hey, just two months ago people were calling him the weakest AD carry 'cause his W manacost was higher.

Two months ago, most Western players were still maxing Q in lane. Also, new top-tier carries always arise when the previous set gets nerfed, no? Players did jump on the "Ezreal is trash" bandwagon a bit too quickly, but that's kind of what players do.

LW+GB on Darius.

This is going to be fun.

Last Whisper was already underwhelming on SR Darius since he dealt tons of mixed damage without it, though. Are you really gonna build two purely offensive items on a melee champion with no escapes and no defensive steroids?

Olaf now has an excuse to build LW. Everything he ever does will be true damage to AP and AD Carries. Even if they actually build armour items.

Olaf already does true damage, though. I could see someone building LW instead of Hexdrinker, perhaps, but Olaf isn't really lacking for damage in the first place.

[toasty]

Two months ago, most Western players were still maxing Q in lane. Also, new top-tier carries always arise when the previous set gets nerfed, no? Players did jump on the "Ezreal is trash" bandwagon a bit too quickly, but that's kind of what players do.

To be fair, Ez was considered "trash" for a long time, basically since the rise of Corki/Ashe as the holy duo of win. Vayne's release, Sivir's FOTM and Grave's release, along with m5's early obsession with MF didn't really help either, likely. Oh, and I totally forgot about Kog and Urgot. Basically . . . we had to go through the entire list of AD carries before we came to Ez, and even then, Graves and Corki are/we still extremely popular. Ez was considered "trash" for most of Season 2 by the West. We never had a reason to play him, anyways, what with all the other FOTM we had.

[ex cathedra]

To be fair, Ez was considered "trash" for a long time, basically since the rise of Corki/Ashe as the holy duo of win. Vayne's release, Sivir's FOTM and Grave's release, along with m5's early obsession with MF didn't really help either, likely. Oh, and I totally forgot about Kog and Urgot. Basically . . . we had to go through the entire list of AD carries before we came to Ez, and even then, Graves and Corki are/we still extremely popular. Ez was considered "trash" for most of Season 2 by the West. We never had a reason to play him, anyways, what with all the other FOTM we had.

On the other hand, there's a solid chance that many of the vocal players who called him trashed played him once, maxed Q, built Triforce, and then never auto-attacked.

But I was referring to the fact his increase in popularity coincided with Graves/Urgot nerfs.

[PersonMan]

Anyone else having a problem with Vayne's ult? Whenever a Vayne ults and I can see her my FPS plummets to about 6. Me and my friend were having the same problem and I was wondering if it's more widespread or just isolated.

[LordShotGun]

To be fair, Ez was considered "trash" for a long time, basically since the rise of Corki/Ashe as the holy duo of win. Vayne's release, Sivir's FOTM and Grave's release, along with m5's early obsession with MF didn't really help either, likely. Oh, and I totally forgot about Kog and Urgot. Basically . . . we had to go through the entire list of AD carries before we came to Ez, and even then, Graves and Corki are/we still extremely popular. Ez was considered "trash" for most of Season 2 by the West. We never had a reason to play him, anyways, what with all the other FOTM we had.

What ever happened to urgot? He was ignored for most of the year but all of a sudden he was picked/banned in 90% of a semi-recent tournament (forgot which one but if anyone listens to the lowelo podcast they talk about it) and now he is back to being completely ignored.

He didn't get any major nerfs but now no one plays him.

Edit: Nevermind. He did get a huge Q damage buff and then nerf that lasted only a couple weeks.

[PersonMan]

Edit: Nevermind. He did get a huge Q damage buff and then nerf that lasted only a couple weeks.

As far as I remember, that was a weird buff/nerf combo that made his late game damage a lot higher, but screwed up his early game damage.

It didn't really effect me much, since I only play supportgot, though, so I could be misremembering it.

[Lix Lorn]

On the other hand, there's a solid chance that many of the vocal players who called him trashed played him once, maxed Q, built Triforce, and then never auto-attacked.

But I was referring to the fact his increase in popularity coincided with Graves/Urgot nerfs.

The single hardest thing about learning Ezreal was remembering to start autoattacking.

[ex cathedra]

What ever happened to urgot? He was ignored for most of the year but all of a sudden he was picked/banned in 90% of a semi-recent tournament (forgot which one but if anyone listens to the lowelo podcast they talk about it) and now he is back to being completely ignored.

He didn't get any major nerfs but now no one plays him.

Edit: Nevermind. He did get a huge Q damage buff and then nerf that lasted only a couple weeks.

Uhm, Urgot received a huge set of range/utility nerfs on his shield, ult, and grenade, along with a change to his Q that made him almost entirely unviable. They reverted the Q change (the change in question was that they changed the ratio from a Total AD ratio (e.g. one that includes base AD) to a bonus AD ratio (one that only includes AD from runes/masteries/items) which completely demolished his normal build path of CDR + ArPen with little to no bonus AD to speak of), but the utility and range changes still went through and he's much, much weaker than he was prior to them.

[Math_Mage]

So, guys.

Everyone has noticed, I'm sure, that every new mode introduced since the beginning of Season 1 has featured level 3 start, increased gold at start, and increased passive XP/gold gain.

What do you think would happen if something similar were implemented on SR?

[Cogwheel]

So, guys.

Everyone has noticed, I'm sure, that every new mode introduced since the beginning of Season 1 has featured level 3 start, increased gold at start, and increased passive XP/gold gain.

What do you think would happen if something similar were implemented on SR?

I would need to wait for two levels less before playing Jax becomes fun.